"Suffering may come as a result of your own feelings, thoughts and actions connected with your task; it may come by itself as a result of your own faults or as a result of other people's actions, attitudes or feelings. But what is important is your attitude towards it. It becomes deliberate if you do not rebel against it, if you do not try to avoid it, if you do not accuse anybody, if you accept it as a necessary part of your work at the moment, and as a means for attaining your aim."
- P.D. Ouspensky - "Conscience: The Search for Truth"
We know that suffering is extremely important in the Work. So vital is it to our spiritual progress that we can't reach a higher state of Being unless we are prepared to suffer, and suffer willingly. What Ouspensky writes about above is that suffering which Christian writers call redemptive, or expiatory
suffering. It's not that this suffering is any different in origin from the types which we've looked at in the preceding posts. It may be produced by our own internal negative thoughts and emotions, by life itself in the normal processes of living on this planet or by the remorse of conscience we feel when we see ourselves as we truly are.
Such suffering creates a spiritual energy which the Work calls "higher hydrogens". I'm convinced that this is the very energy that the Christian churches (especially the Catholic and Orthodox denominations) call the "treasury of merit", which is stored up in higher realms to be available for the redemption and healing of the world.
Jesus Christ Himself created an unimaginable amount of this spiritual substance during His ministry on Earth and most especially during His Sacred Passion and Crucifixion.
Such fine energies were necessary if mankind was ever going to be able to climb back up the Ray of Creation by means of the "side octave" created by the Sun, which to us in the Work represents the level of Christ.
We could not create sufficient by ourselves to accomplish this task. Wise men and woman throughout the ages have accepted suffering as part of their path, even before the incarnation of the Messiah. In Isaiah, the prophet describes the plight of the "suffering servant," a virtuous, wholly innocent person who is punished for the sins of others, and who "openeth not his mouth" to defend himself against his accusers. With hindsight, Christians interpret this passage to refer to Jesus. Orthodox Jews see it as applying to all innocent people made to suffer for the sins of others.
But however much individual human beings were prepared to suffer on behalf of others, it took a completely perfected and sinless human being - Jesus - to undertake the huge task of creating the energy which alone could lead us to redemption, or salvation. Nobody else had reached that level of perfection.
This is the significance of the Passion of Christ. This is what makes it possible for all of us, whether in the Work or living as Good Householders, to begin the ascent back to our origins, the true home of Essence. Without Him, we would never have been able to do this, and we would have been lost forever. Even now, our own personal redemption and the redemption of mankind is far from a certainty. Gurdjieff describes the creation of man, the three-brained being, as "an experiment". If sufficient people do not work on themselves, the experiment may fail.
Today, with the possibility of environmental disasters or vastly destructive wars looming more closely than ever, we can understand this difficult saying. Our consciousness, our Being, has not kept pace with our scientific knowledge. If mankind does not evolve, the planet may be destroyed.
Catholics have the clearest understand of the necessity for suffering, in my view. Sufi teachers also talk of the "Way of Blame," which is very similar to the path taken by Jesus and by Gurdjieff, who refused, like the "suffering servant" of the Bible, to respond to their accusers and accepted blame and suffering as the path to enlightenment. But few outside the Muslim world have heard of this way, while Catholic Christians the world over do understand and value the worth of suffering.
Catholic schoolchildren are taught from the earliest age that when they have difficulties or pain, they may "offer it up" in union with the sacrifice of Jesus, for a cause that they themselves may choose or simply to be used for the redemption of creation in any way that Jesus may desire.
St Pio of Pietrelcina (formerly venerated as Padre Pio, the Cappuchin Friar and stigmatist) says, "If humanity could realize the value of suffering, they would ask for nothing else ... My sufferings are more precious to me than gold".
St Pio experienced extremes of physical, mental and spiritual suffering in his lifetime. Not only did his stigmata, the wounds in his flesh identical to those of Christ, cause him almost unbearable pain and loss of blood, his physical health was fragile throughout his life and included pains and symptoms of many different kinds, all verified by medical doctors.
Yet not only did he willingly accept them in the interest of saving souls, he also accepted, though with even greater suffering, the pain of being completely misunderstood and vilified as a charlatan, even by some officials in the church, who later realized their error and apologized for it.
Redemptive suffering can only come to us when we are in what the church calls "a state of grace", which means that we are free of serious sin, and in what the Work calls "a state of self-remembering". If, in that condition, we are asked to undergo suffering, we may willingly accept it as a sure way to transformation which also helps many others, from our own family to our Work colleagues, to people far away on the other side of the planet who have never heard of us but who benefit by receiving the fine energy created by our acceptance of suffering.
Our suffering transforms our blood itself, when it's accepted with good will. Many poisons are eliminated, and fine, higher hydrogens can begin to circulate around our body. Sometimes this may result in physical healing, sometimes not. Many, if not most, of those who are willing to undergo redemptive suffering find that the task is theirs for a lifetime. But the experience is not a depressing one - on the contrary, suffering may be accepted not only willingly but with peace and joy, because the sufferer knows that what he or she is undergoing is of very great value to God and their fellow beings.
When suffering continues for long periods, or for the person's lifetime, then we are invited to use it as material for spiritual growth and understanding. The health of the body, while to be sought and enjoyed when it occurs, is not our chief goal. It is the health of the spirit which is being created here, a condition which will last past our physical lifetime and offer us the chance to progress even further in a different dimension, that which Christians call "heaven".
Without suffering, no higher "being bodies" can be created.
On a different level, suffering can also heal us emotionally if it is accepted and willingly undergone. If it has been caused by anything we ourselves have done, then we may learn from it and renounce the faults that caused it; if not, if it is truly undeserved, then besides offering it to God as Catholics do, we may also grow in compassion towards our fellow human beings. We begin to understand what innocent victims have to suffer, and we become more patient and more willing to help others.
The great Catholic theologian Henry Nouwen described the enormous benefits that suffering had given him, in his writings. After a period of great mental and spiritual torment, he began to live simply, among the mentally and physically handicapped residents of "L'Arche," a Christian-run programme which cares for those unable to care for themselves.
In serving them, Nouwen discovered a deeper realm of living, a depth of understanding and a channel of grace which he had never suspected and which brought him healing and peace. For the first time, he understood the meaning of love.
This, too, is redemptive suffering. And it is the task required of us in the Five Being Strivings, where Gurdjieff explains that we must eventually begin to make efforts to lighten the sufferings of God Himself. We can do this only after painstaking work on ourselves, accepting suffering in the ways I've described above. If we persevere, we will truly take part in the redemption of creation, comforting our Creator as we do so.
How can God suffer? Is he not above all pain?
No. God has chosen to undertake the unimaginably difficult task of creating and maintaining the entire cosmos. And he is intimately involved because of His love for us. He is with us in our sufferings, and he is comforted by our willingness to bear them patiently, even joyfully, playing our part in the redemptive process.
A distressed Jew once asked, "Where was God in the holocaust?"
And the reply came, "He was there, suffering with the victims."
St Paul puts it thus: "I, Paul, am made a minister; who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up that which may be lacking in the afflictions of Christ, in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the Church".
In other words, St Paul was rejoicing because he was suffering as part of the body of Christ, joining his own personal suffering to that of Jesus, helping the entire Church - visible and invisible - grow in grace.
In the Work we don't use religious language, but when we take suffering as a path to enlightenment we join with Jesus, St Paul, St Therese, St Pio, St John Paul II, the Buddha, the Sufi Pirs and Sheikhs, and all the saints and angels both known and unknown who comprise the circle of Conscious Humanity.
To be among them is our goal, and the way to reach it is by redemptive suffering.
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